All art is inspired by something. Nature, people, television, books. They can all be traced back to an artist’s muse. But when does inspiration become copying?
Pinterest, a popular social media application, sometimes blurs the line between being a place of inspiration and a place of plagiarism. Many artists use this platform to post their art, create boards to find their artistic style, or look for new inspiration. Some artists may see this as learning, others as copying and claiming someone else’s art as their own. They accuse Pinterest artists and users of stealing from the original; however, Pinterest was made to be a pool of ideas for users to take inspiration from.
For those who do not know, Pinterest is a social media application, which allows users to create, save, and share images called “pins” to boards. Many users use these boards to collage ideas for a new room, art styles, characters, and many more ideas. Pins are uploaded by a user manually by either selecting a photo and creating a caption for it or saving it from a website to Pinterest, the latter being more common. But where does the art community come into play? Let us start with reference drawing.
What is reference drawing? Reference drawing is another way of saying ‘a referenced drawing.’ It is when someone looks at a piece of art and tries to recreate it to the best of their ability, without tracing. It is done mostly with traditional art (pen and paper) rather than digitally. Meanwhile, a traced drawing is as the name is. It is a carbon copy of someone else’s art, whether it is the whole piece or just the pose. In comparison, there will be some discrepancies between reference drawing from the original and the newly created piece. Some people do this to teach themselves a new style, personal use of the art, or to start learning how to draw.
However, some people will try to pass referenced art off as their own, without credit to the original creator at all. While that in itself is a problem, people should still be able to reference draw without the fear of being told their art is fake. When posting it online, credit should be given to the original artist and the post should clearly state somewhere that it is a reference from another art. There are two things that can happen when an artist does not give credit and reference draws something. The more common outcome is that no one cares about where they got the art from, especially with smaller artists. However, in rare cases, the post will receive a lot of attention and hate, which occurs more so when the art is referenced from an artist with a large follower count.
Tara Neemuchwala, a sophomore at CHS, has had experience in the Pinterest Art Community. She uses the app as inspiration for various things, including painting ideas. When asked about getting inspiration from Pinterest, she agreed that it should not be a problem as long as credit was given to the original artist.
“Everyone created their own art in different ways, and I think that Pinterest is another form of inspiration,” Neemuchwala said. “As the natural world can provide inspiration, so can other works of art, whether seen digitally or online. I think the most important part is to just give credit where it’s due.”
Going back to the idea of credit/no credit when it comes to art, this issue is also embedded in Pinterest. As mentioned before on how pins were created, a lot of these users do not mean to discredit the original artist, with lack of credit purely by accident. Most of the time, people do not pay attention or do not know who the original artist is. Other times, there are users who will actively call out pins that are not by the poster. Many of them are polite and tell the creator that the credit is missing before commenting the name of the artist below the pin. There are very few users who will actively hate on a pin for not giving credit. On the other hand, when someone creates a pin with the intent of stealing, that is when the problem comes in. Either they are trying to impersonate the original art, or stealing art on purpose and calling it their own. Some artists might have a Pinterest account, so it is best to message the artist or see if they have a confirmed account. In the scenario they do not have a profile at all, the best course of action is as follows: reach out to the artist to confirm that this is not them. Report the account to Pinterest as a fake, and then try to spread the word around. This also applies to the context where the artist has an official account, but the reposted art is by someone impersonating them.
Problems with bases and the art community are also a big thing. Bases are typically the anatomical structure of a drawing, the pose and nothing else. There are a lot of them floating around Pinterest, and many people use them to create their own drawings. Some people claim this makes someone else a false artist, because they are taking from an art piece someone else created. However, with trends like “two bases two artists,” it seems to be generally acceptable. Senior Jazzy Lyn believes that it would depend on what the base in question was made for and how it is being used.
“I think if it’s a base, and it’s meant for you to take inspiration from, or use it as a reference, then I think that you taking that and drawing sort of on top of it with your own drawing isn’t directly copying; because it’s very generic,” Lyn said. “But if it’s a base sketch that somebody thought was a blank pose, then I think: yes that would be directly copying.”
Lyn has reported accounts before for copying or claiming art that was not theirs, and thinks that credit should be given to the original artist if someone uses a base the artist made. Anything that was not intended to be a base should not be used at all.
All in all, it is perfectly acceptable to use Pinterest as inspiration for things, including but not limited to art, but there are boundaries to what is appropriate and what is not. Someone is still an artist, even if they use Pinterest to find ideas, even if they use references to teach themselves—because we all have to start somewhere, right?